What He Would Have Wanted
by Talking to Angels
Summary: All she can remember is that it was all her fault that he wasn't here. No matter what the others told her, she knew that it was her fault and her fault alone, and if it weren't for her, he would still be here. / Kainora. One-shot


**A/N: Apologies if there are mistakes and if it's OOC. Hope that it's alright.**

* * *

_Jinora. Jinora. Jinora._

Jinora shifted in her bed and tried to block out the sound.

_Jinora. Jinora. Jinora. _

She tried harder to ignore the voice that had haunted her for weeks.

_Jinora. Jinora. Jinora. Jinora. Jinora!_

She couldn't take it anymore. She shot up in bed. "_Stop it!_"

The voice faded, and Jinora was left breathing hard. She knew that this was going to be another restless night. It was better to stay awake anyway, that way she could guarantee that there will be no nightmares.

Jinora slipped out of bed and padded towards the kitchen of her small cabin. She had requested one of her own close to the shore of Air Temple Island several weeks ago, claiming she needed some space.

In the kitchen, she poured some water into the kettle and started to heat it up. Waiting for the water to boil, she went and stood beside the window.

It was a cool summer night, with the stars bright and the sky clear. Republic City stood in the distance, glittering with all the lights in the buildings. Suddenly, she thought she felt a presence behind her. Whipping around, she found Kai standing several feet away.

"K-Kai?" Jinora cautiously inquired.

"Beautiful night, huh?" He said, walking to stand beside her at the window.

"Yeah," Jinora answered.

"We used to sneak out on nights like this." He remarked lightly, turning his head to look at her.

She blushed, and let out a small laugh, thinking of all the times they used to sneak out together. Sitting under the stars, the wind in their faces, the quiet laughter and light blushes shared in the night.

"Oh Kai, I wish we could go back to those times." Jinora said wistfully.

"I do too," And with that he began to fade, his voice becoming softer and harder to hear, his green eyes less vibrant. "I do too."

And then he was gone, with Jinora grasping at thin air, and tears filling in her eyes. Realization and remembrance brought her back to her senses, and she collapsed on the floor, fighting back sobs and angry at herself for believing that just for a second, he was there with her and everything was alright. But it was just her imagination, driven by the despair and loneliness that she had been feeling ever since that terrible day weeks ago.

The kettle whistled, signalling that the water was ready. Running the sleeve of her nightgown over her eyes, she walked over and pulled the kettle away from the fire, and began to make a cup of tea.

As she sat down beside the fire with her tea warm in her hands, she remembered the much happier times when she would sit with Kai out under the stars, in some corner of the courtyard on a night like this.

* * *

Everyone else was attending the history lesson Tenzin was giving in the courtyard, but since Jinora was a master, she wasn't required to listen. Instead, she was running through the obstacle course, hoping to clear her mind and sharpen up her skills, which have slipped over the past few weeks. When she got to the balancing poles, however, she was thrown into a flashback of several years ago, shortly after she had gotten her tattoos.

_"Hey Jinora! Let's play a game, see who can last the longest on these poles."_

_"I could easily beat you without even trying," She boasted._

_"Oh yeah? I'm a lot better now than I was before, you know." _

_"Uh-huh, and I'm a master." _

_"Come on, please?"_

_She laughed. "Alright, but don't be sulky when you lose!"_

_She and Kai jumped onto the training poles, and started making their way to the other side. Once they were close to reaching the end, Kai sent a current of air towards Jinora, causing her to lose her balance. With a shocked gasp, and a small scream, she started to fall of the pole. _

_Kai had anticipated this, so he airbent another current below Jinora to catch her, and propel her back onto her pole. Once she had recovered from the brief shock, she turned and faced Kai._

_"What was that? Using airbending to knock people over is cheating!"_

_Kai laughed. "Hey, I wasn't really planning on letting you fall, just messin' with you. I caught you, didn't I? I'll always catch you when you fall." _

_That last sentence put a blush on Jinora's face, and Kai smiled. _

_"Well, really, I could have caught myself, but thanks." _

_Kai smiled even wider and continued the course, but just before he reached the other side, a wave of air from Jinora knocked him off his post. He yelped as he landed face-first in the mud._

_Looking up, he saw Jinora laughing from her vantage point. He shouted up to her._

_"Hey! What was that for?" _

_"Sorry, but you know, just messing with you." Jinora didn't sound sorry at all._

_"You actually made me fall," _

_"Yeah, but unlike you, I never made any promises about not letting you fall." She grinned down at him._

_Huffing, he stood up and tried to brush some mud off of him. Jinora giggled, then sent a stream of air to pick him up and placing him on the pole beside her. _

_"Don't worry, I'll clean those for you, since I was the one who made them dirty anyway." Jinora assured him._

_"Thanks, that's real nice of you." Kai smiled at her._

_For a moment, the two just stood and stared at each other, until they both flushed and looked away. _

_"So, the race?" _

_"Alright, let's continue. And this time, no one is pushing anyone over."_

Snapping out of her memories, Jinora made a jump for the next pole, but missed. That was quite unusual for her, but then again, everything has been going downhill lately. Under normal circumstances, Jinora probably could have cushioned her fall with her airbending, but today she just fell straight into the mud.

Jinora hadn't fallen on this obstacle course for years and years. And when her face met the muck, it brought with it a painful reminder of recent events. The smell of dirt in her nostrils, she fall she took when he pushed her out of the way, all too familiar with this face plant in the mud right now.

"Where are you now?" Jinora sobbed, her tears cutting trails in the mud on her face. "You said you'd always catch me when I fall. So where are you now?"

It wasn't fair of her to ask for things like that. He had said that he would always catch her when she fell, but in order to catch her, he would have to be there. And he wasn't there. So it wasn't fair of her to ask for things like that. But she didn't care.

"Had a fall?" A voice said, and she pushed herself up from the mud. And there he was, standing above her, with those bright green eyes and that smile that made her heart melt every time.

Kai bent down until he was eye level with Jinora, and she had the urge of pulling him into a hug as tight as she could, but her body felt frozen.

"Hey, remember, you still look beautiful covered in mud." He said in a soft voice.

Jinora's eyes overflowed with tears. She finally found the strength to reach out, but by then, Kai was gone.

She lay back down in the mud, and continued to cry. It must have been the millionth time this week that she's cried like this, and countless more times the week before. But she couldn't stop, not like she wanted to anyway. Because all she can remember is that it was all _her fault _that he wasn't here. No matter what the others told her, she knew that it was _her fault _and _her fault _alone, and if it weren't for her, he would still be here.

* * *

Pepper grumbled appreciatively as Jinora fed her, but Jinora didn't notice. Her body moved almost mechanically, like her mind was paralyzed and her body was running on pure instinct.

Jinora reached under Pepper's chin and scratched her there, and a memory resurfaced in her mind.

_"Jinora, look! He likes it when I scratch him here." Kai was petting his flying bison, Lefty, under his chin._

_Jinora laughed and stroked Pepper at the same spot. "Pepper likes it too!" _

_Kai grinned and sat down on the ground beside Lefty, and Jinora took the space beside him._

_"Um, Jinora, I know this is kind of a weird question, but, do you ever want to get married?" _

_"Why are you asking?" Jinora could feel a blush creeping up her neck._

_"Well, no reason, just because Lefty and Pepper are so close, you know? Maybe they're mates. And since Pepper is your bison that got me thinking of you- not in a weird way or anything, of course. Just one thought let to another, and yeah." Kai rambled, feeling his face grow hot._

_Jinora laughed and turned to face Kai. "Of course I want to get married, it's always been one of my dreams to have a family of my own one day. But with the right person, of course."_

_Kai smiled, and they both looked away and blushed. That seemed to be happening a lot more often lately- the blushing when they're around each other. _

_"Well, whoever that person is, they're really lucky." Kai said softly._

Sadness overwhelmed her as she thought back to that afternoon many years ago, when they were still children. Jinora couldn't believe her mind had related petting Pepper under her chin to a discussion about marriage with Kai.

But she hoped he had known that the person she had been talking about, that "right person", had been him.

* * *

That night, as she drifted off to sleep, she hoped she wouldn't have a dream.

She was wrong. The dream came, and instantly she knew which dream it was and what was going to happen. Of course she would know, she's dreamed this countless times the past few weeks.

_Opal and Kai had been ambushed by bandits in the Earth Kingdom. Jinora, Ikki and Meelo had been called upon to provide assistance. _

_But still they were outnumbered. Jinora hadn't known one of the bandits, the one with the swords, had been sneaking up on her while she fought with a waterbender. All she knew, was that she suddenly received a hard shove from behind, and crashed to the ground. She tasted the dusty earth from the ground, and took a moment to register what had happened. _

_Turning her head, she saw Kai. He had been the one delivering the push, she realized, and was on the ground as well as a result of the momentum he had used to get her out of the way. Jinora's eyes widened as she saw the man with the swords approach Kai. She tried to warn him, tried to get up, tried to do _something_, but she wasn't fast enough. The man had slashed Kai in the stomach before either Jinora or Kai could do anything. _

_Jinora didn't know what to do. She couldn't think. She started breathing hard. There he was, the boy she loved, lying on the ground with a gash in his stomach, and the assaulter standing above him. She began feeling multiple emotions at once, anger, despair, fear- and she channeled them all into one massive air blast that knocked the man away. _

_Running to Kai's side, she found him struggling to breathe. One look at his wound was enough, it was too deep for anyone to heal. Feeling tears welling up in her eyes, she told him how sorry she was. _

_Jinora didn't even notice the other bandits snatching up the supplies Opal and Kai had been planning to take to a nearby village. Didn't even notice Opal, Ikki and Meelo being beat back as the bandits escaped. All of her world was now in her arms, living his last moments all because he had been trying to save her life. _

_With his last breaths, he told her that she didn't have to apologize, he was sorry that he'll never fulfill his promise of staying with her for the rest of her life. _

_And then he was gone, leaving her to enter the darkest period of her life alone. _

She ended up reliving the moment where he had pushed her, the moment when the bandit slashed the boy she had loved so much in the stomach.

She woke up screaming for him to move.

Panting, Jinora looked around her bedroom, and remembered yet again these last several weeks. She buried her face in her blankets and started to cry for at least the tenth time in the last 24 hours.

* * *

She had exited her cabin in the morning and was sitting down on the grass on a patch of land overlooking the water, when she was suddenly reminded of Kai. It's not too surprising actually, everything reminded her of him nowadays.

But unlike usual, when she would feel either sadness, loss or despair when she thought of him, this time she felt anger. And Jinora rarely got angry. Especially at Kai.

"Hey Jinora,"

She stiffened. _Of course he would come right now. _But at least for once she wanted him to show up, because now she can tell him what she's been meaning to say.

"_You!_" She stood up and spun around, and saw him jump a foot back. "How _dare_ you! How _dare_ you break your promises! How _dare_ you leave us- leave me like this!"

"Jinora, I- I'm sorry, I-" He stammered.

"No! You can't just get away with this with a simple apology! Do you know what you did to the other airbenders when you left? Do you know what you did to my parents, and my siblings? Do you know what you did to _me_? They were destroyed! I was destroyed! You left us in ruins and you can't expect me to forgive you with just an apology!" She paused, out of breath from yelling.

"Jinora?" She whipped around, and saw Kya approaching her from behind. "Are you alright?"

Jinora looked back to Kai, only to find that he's disappeared. Huffing, she turned back to her aunt.

"Hi, Aunt Kya, I didn't see you there." She said quietly.

"What are you doing? It looked like you were just shouting at air." Her aunt sat down, and Jinora did the same.

"Um, well- I..." Jinora didn't know how to explain that she hadn't exactly been yelling at thin air, but at Kai, who of course wasn't actually there, but rather a figment of her imagination.

"I heard what you were saying." Kya chuckled at Jinora's bewildered expression. "You weren't exactly having a quiet chat, you know."

After a moment, her aunt spoke up again. "You must be really hurt."

"Well, yeah, since you heard my 'conversation' and all."

"Don't be so grumpy, cheer up, that's what he would want you to do if he were here."

"But if he was here then I wouldn't be having these problems!" Jinora just short of snapped. Then, she sighed. "I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling like myself lately."

"Everyone has been devastated about Kai's death. You especially, we all knew that you two were very close. It's perfectly understandable to be upset and lost." Kya said gently.

"But it's so not fair." Jinora whispered as she tucked her arms into her stomach and faced away from Kya.

"Nothing in life is fair, Jinora. But the seasons come and go, the world around us, and the people, they change. Life goes on, and sometimes, we just have to let go."

"But I don't want to let go, I'm scared that if I let go, I'll forget." Jinora looked up at her aunt.

Kya smiled and took Jinora's hand. "Trust me, you won't forget. Kai will always be with us, his legacy will continue down the generations."

"Will it, really? He wasn't even a master." Jinora whispered. "But he was so close."

"Well, if we don't forget him, he would never really be gone." Kya said simply. "Whenever you're feeling down or lost, just do whatever he would have wanted you to do if he were here."

With that, Kya got up and left, leaving Jinora to her own thoughts. Letting her aunt's words sink in, she finally felt like she had found some peace.

Closing her eyes, she listened to the waves crashing against the shore, and felt the wind blowing against her face. She understood now that she needed to let go, but not forget. After all, the sun had kept rising through good times and bad, and she needed to do the same.

Suddenly, feeling a presence, Jinora opened her eyes. Sure enough, Kai was standing in front of her.

"Kai!" Jinora exclaimed happily, standing up to hug him. "I'm sorry, it wasn't your fault, I shouldn't have said what I said. I know you would have never left if you had a choice." She rambled out an apology.

"Thank you, Jinora. And- I'm still so sorry. I miss you." He said, his green eyes soft and longing.

Jinora held him tight, wanting to never let go. But she knew it wasn't possible, as much as the both of them want it to be.

"I do, too. But we'll see each other again someday, right?"

"Of course!" He flashed her a crooked smile, before bending over and kissing her on the forehead. She blushed, and he began to fade away.

"See you again someday, Kai."


End file.
